


A piano, a bus and a decaf iced macchiato with caramel syrup

by orcamoon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Remus Lupin, Pianist!Sirius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6394906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orcamoon/pseuds/orcamoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Exactly fifteen pianos were put up in the city, with fifteen posters that simply read “Play me”"<br/>Remus Lupin's bus route is disrupted, bringing a beautiful, romantic, arrogant Pianist into his life. But nothing will ever come of it, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A piano, a bus and a decaf iced macchiato with caramel syrup

On the first day of November, exactly three hundred posters were put up in the city. Seventy six of them snaked around the roads in two mainly parallel paths, that wound into suburbs and met for a few hundred meters, before diverging and carrying on their journey. They followed the routes of the fifty-two and fifty-one bus, and announced their month long cancellation. Incidentally, exactly fifteen pianos were put up in the city, with fifteen posters that simply read “Play me”. One piano was a glossy red, and looked so new that the council were worried that nobody would play it, or everyone would play it. Nobody played it on the first day, there was an aura of perfection around the piano, one which the passers by, with their twitching fingers and apprehensive glances, were scared to ruin. 

I noticed the bus posters and the piano posters in that order on the second day of November. I rethought my route and ran down the road, from the northward bound bus stop to the southward bound one, and caught the first bus into town. The leaves were still crunchy, and provided a warm background for the flash of colour from the halloween chocolate wrappers that littered the ground. The air was harsh and ideal for scarves. I had a blue and red reversible one on and folded it up into a pillow to rest my head on as I gazed out of the window. When the bus stopped at the terminal, I said thank you and departed, making my way to the bus station near the waterfront. Being so short sighted, I have to admit that the first time I saw the piano, a rush of fear swept through me. I thought it was a monster at first, then a car, then I put my glasses on, taking them off swiftly once the threat was neutralised. The music should have given it away, it was a melody I know now to be Chopin. Winter Winds to be precise. The piano was situated in a small square off the main streets, opposite a cafe and a bookshop. It was apple red. At the angle I was looking at it, all I could see was a head of black hair bobbing up and down. I could tell whoever it was found themselves at ease with the piano, and although their movement was limited, they were dancing as they played. 

That night I slept terribly, the blankets were too hot but the room itself was too cold, I woke up and went back to sleep sporadically until six, when I finally got out of bed, I was grouchy and unamused. I walked to the northward bound bus stop, then ran back to the southward one, then got the bus into town again. This route was actually faster, I thought. Maybe I’ll see the pianist again, I hoped. This time it was an upbeat pop song that graced my ears, one that was played repetitively on the radio around five years ago and then was forgotten by everybody. Hearing it again brought back pleasant memories, of holidays with friends and laughter something else about it was unmistakably familiar too. The way the music was played, syncopated but perfect. For the second time I found myself drawn to the piano, and the pianist. For purely biological needs, I walked into the cafe opposite, turning back to look outside more times than I was proud of. I got an americano, and put my book into my bag so that I could hold it with both hands and warm up. The song had changed once I had left the shops and I can’t remember what one was being played. I’d put my glasses on to see the specials board and walked outside with them still on to see the sight outside me in full definition. The piano was impossibly unweathered and was cold and it it looked worlds apart from how it sounded. I took them off again.

I’d switched my scarf to blue the next day and wore my glasses. Something inside me said this was a bad idea, maybe in the pianist’s head I was “the boy in the red scarf and no glasses”. But then I could just be “the creepy kid who stares”, or “the ugly looking one, look at that hair and that massive nose” or maybe they hadn’t even seen me. I’d gotten a different bus into town today, one that would take me to another stop. I’d approach the pianist from a different street. I might even see them. It was the new John Lewis advert song playing today, in the original style, and a soft, low voice sang over the music, giving it a depth I would have never believed it needed. I felt like I was observing something too personal, the pianist put so much emotion into their playing, and now when it was coupled with the sound of their voice I felt sickeningly voyeuristic. My stomach turned and so did I, I cut through the main road, away from the piano and didn’t speak to anybody all day.

On the fifth of November, I remembered that I had to be in early so that I could print out an essay in the library, and get a few of my friends to proofread it. I got the same bus as the day before and tried not to think about the pianist. I thought about fireworks instead, lighting them in the garden, and that split second of fear the moment before it shoots out of the pvc tube into the starless sky. I had the paper copy of the essay in my hand, and was shifting the paragraphs round, elaborating and omitting with a well worn brown ink fountain pen. I had it on a textbook, I think it was chemistry, and since i’d gotten into the flow of it, I annotated on foot as I navigated the city centre. I didn’t realise what was missing until I passed the piano and noticed the silence. There was a boy, or maybe a man, sat on the stool. He had the same black hair as my pianist, and he was dressed at ends with his music tastes, in a leather jacket that must have limited his motion but he still looked completely comfortable. His eyes were shut, his mouth was shut, and his fingers were motionless on the keys. He was beautiful. A single note played. I walked away quickly with my head down but I knew that he’d seen me. 

On the sixth day I was wearing my scarf on the red side. Two baristas, both looking very disgruntled, though one more so than the other were arguing loudly inside the cafe, well within earshot of me and the pianist, who was leafing through a music book.  
“He’s good for business” one said. I walked inside.  
“He’s a bloody nuisance that’s what he is. It was cute the first day, now we’ve got fangirls in here until nine! People need coffee when they wake up! Not because they want to ogle some pretty boy on a piano. If I hear one more order for a decaf iced macchiato with caramel syrup i’m going to flip. It’s November for christ’s sake!” the other barista replied.  
“Yes love, what will you have?” the less disgruntled one said, this time to me. “A decaf iced macchiato with caramel syrup please. To take out” I deadpanned. The more disgruntled barista looked at me. “I’m kidding. I’ll have tea please. But still to take out”. They both chuckled, but one more darkly than the other. Shostakovich was playing now, and I took my coffee and walked outside without saying anything more. I’d gotten fifty meters down the road when I heard a voice calling me and the music stop.  
“Hey! You in the red scarf!” Oh dear. I’d been found out. I turned around and the pianist stood up and walked over to me. “Were they talking about me?” he asked. His voice was, deep and slightly southern sounding. I wondered if he was a student.  
“Um yeah” I said.  
“What were they saying?”  
“Nothing bad”, I’d been avoiding looking directly at his face out of sheer embarrassment yet I couldn’t help but notice how perfect he looked. “They… they were just saying how cute you were and that you were good for business but one hated decaf frappiatos with caramel and he didn’t like all the girls who fancy you because they don’t really like coffee, they just think you are really cute or maybe it’s the piano or maybe both? I think it could be both”  
“Okay” he said and walked away.  
“Yeah...” I tailed off my pathetic speech. I got the bus to school, and when I got there told everyone I could about how monumentally I’d messed up with the pianist. 

On Monday the ninth, I took a ringbinder file with me. It was green and covered in animal drawings and it did nothing to make me look presentable. I had used the weekend to mourn my chances with the pianist, taking the line of reasoning that I never had much of a chance anyway. I wasn’t the best looking person in the world, but I was clearly the most awkward. And besides, there are things about me that negate everything that was going in my favour anyway, so in a way, the universe had it sorted out for me. I only stopped for a moment to listen to the piano, but that time was all it took. He smiled at me, such a perfect smile, and held aloft a cup that I highly suspected contained an iced decaf macchiato with caramel syrup, and written on it was the name Sirius.

Now that I had a name for him I was obsessed. I felt dreadful. A plastic cup had undone all the logical reasoning i’d put in place during the weekend. I’d spoken to my friends in school and they advised me that I need to at least try to talk to him, i’d never know if I didn’t, and anyway, what was I thinking, of course he’d like me. I thought that that was purely nonsensical, I’m not the type of person that people want. I said “I’ll do it”. As I got off the bus into town on the tenth of november, saying thank you, I realised that because I was such an awful liar, I would actually have to live up to my promise. I’d just talk to him, strike up a conversation, and hopefully not call him by his name. The sky had lost it’s colour and the leaves had lost their crunch, but there was music playing, and the plummet in temperature meant that I could wear my favourite hat that my friend Lily had knitted for me, a black one with cat ears, and a monotone scarf to match, in my mind I looked suave and sophisticated, maybe as french as my name sounded. Or maybe I looked like a furry, who knows. I could hear a voice singing with the piano before I even turned the corner, a deep, seductive Alto. Her melody fell and rose alongside his and like a kite in the wind their syncopation was exactly in time. When I saw her, my chest froze. She was beautiful. Her wavy brown hair seemed to be in constant motion tumbling down her back. When she turned around, her red lips forming words that were drowned out my heartbeat, I realised that she was the closest anybody could come to perfection. She stopped singing and nudged Sirius, he turned around and saw me, smiled and whispered something into the girl’s ear. I was frozen in my place. Sirius started to play a surprisingly grave sounding tune, one that I remembered from my tragic youth in a choir with just two members. It was the cat duet. I lasted seventeen meows before my body betrayed my emotions, and ran away. 

The eleventh saw me take a detour through the business district. Here the streets were wide and uniform, each corner leading to another predictable parade of miserable people and miserable buildings. There was colour here, bright in the advertisements and the neon tips of the clouds that stretched out through gaps in the grey. Soaring over the rooftops, the biting sea breeze carried the scent of autumn to me. Yet the sound was just noise, it went unnoticed and was insignificant to all. But not today. The city was composing a symphony of its own and Sirius had unknowingly taught me how to hear it. 

At the end of the month, this torture would be over. Falling for someone was not meant to feel like this, I thought I had moved on from darkness that had consumed me in the past, the doubt that engulfed me, and the fear of worthlessness that cast its shadow over every waking moment. Countless nurses, doctors and friends had told me that I could still live a full and happy life. I could still find love. I could devote my life to science if I didn’t. I felt selfish and disgusting every time my mind wandered to Sirius, I felt like a curse, a parasite, a virus. The thoughts that should have been normal in my head were twisted and perverse. I wanted to spend time with him, I just wanted to be with him in any way. I might as well have been wishing death upon him. 

Twelve days into November, and I was already wishing it was the end. Waking up late and missing three busses meant that I didn’t have the liberty of taking the scenic route, and I had to walk straight past the piano, wearing that stupid hat so that I could get the second bus on time. I passed through the square, glancing momentarily at him and the two cups of coffee that sat upon his piano. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I didn’t have to see his face, and I had earphones in so I didn’t have to hear him. I suppose that’s why I didn’t notice him stop playing and run up to me, until the cup was inches away from my face, and all I could see was the word “Kitty” on sky blue card and his beautiful, yet slightly hesitant face looking at me. I took the earphones out and took the coffee cup too, it was only slightly warm, and I could see now that he had doubled up on the paper cups to insulate it.  
“It’s to say sorry” he started “For yesterday. Well no the day before. I got you one yesterday too but you weren't here”. I was speechless, and let him stumble through his speech. “I think it must have looked like I was taking the piss. But I don’t know much about you and I figured you must like music and cats so I combined them sort of? You seemed pretty upset and you ran off before I could do anything.” I still said nothing. “It’s tea. It’s the safest option too because you can always add more milk and everyone likes it. If you don’t like it that’s fine, you can have mine. I’ve had some of it but I promise you won’t catch anything gross from it!”  
I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.  
I took a sip of the coffee and swallowed it, despite it burning my tongue.  
“It’s great, thank you.”  
“So you accept my apology?” Sirius asked, managing to look at me sheepishly despite being an actual walking deity.  
“Oh crap of course I do! That was just me being a bit of an idiot the other day”  
“I don’t blame you. One of the baristas came outside and started giving me a right telling off”  
“Oh fuck was it the one with the purple hair?”  
“The very one!”  
“Wow, what did he say?”  
“He sort of lectured me about breaking hearts and he got angry at Dorcas too, saying she didn’t help matters! He thought we were a couple!?”  
“Are you not?”  
“No way, she wouldn’t go for a guy like me, or a guy at all for that matter”  
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that it takes more than a cheesy song to break my heart”  
Sirius looked at me and smiled slightly “Well I’m glad to hear that, I’m not going to keep you any longer, you’ll be late for school. You got a good day planned?”  
“Chemistry, Biology, English Lit, then home at lunchtime”  
“I hate you. I’m in the lab all day and then i’ve got to do write ups all night if I want to have anything of a social life this weekend.”  
“Well I wish you the best of luck!”  
“I doubt I’ll need it. Labs are piss easy”  
“Well I’d say bad luck just to spite you, but I think there are ways a practical could go terribly wrong. So I’ll just say goodbye”  
“Have a good day!”  
“You too”  
He sat back down at the piano, and smiled at me when I turned my head back. I imagined him recounting or whole conversation to his friends in Uni, and them all having a jolly good laugh at the ugly, diseased boy who was arrogant enough to think he even deserved an apology.

I was late to school on the thirteenth. I tried to repay Sirius for yesterday, with his usual controversial choice of coffee , but every time I tried to give it to him, he shook his head, and continued to play. After the fifth attempt, I just decided to wait it out, and pulled up one of the chairs from the cafe to sit with him. He played his way through the whole of Faure’s Requiem, initially he hummed the bass part quietly, while I softly sang the tenor line. Gradually he started to sing, louder than me, and by Libera Me, we were in full flow. He lifted his hands triumphantly at the end, letting the last chord dissipate in the air. The passers by who had stopped to see us perform were clapping, and those who had places to be had stuffed the donation box almost to the brim. Sirius was smiling, and blushing ever so slightly and I’d never been so thankful in all my life for my ability to memorise songs off by heart. Once the crowd had left, he turned to me and took the coffee out of my hands.  
“So you’re either a sight reading genius or a complete nerd?” Sirius said.  
“The second one. We did it in choir a few years ago. I’ve got no musical ability at all” I replied, figuring I might as well be honest.  
“But you can still appreciate it. I like that.” Sirius was smiling again and I felt the overwhelming urge to run away. “What time does your school start by the way?”  
“Um quarter to nine.” Sirius showed me his phone, with the numbers 08:25 on the lock screen.  
“Shit!” I said “I’ve really got to go, I didn’t realise how much time had passed” I gathered up my bag and folders from the floor.  
“How often do your busses come?”  
“Oh they’re really frequent, I might just make it if I run”  
“Okay then, well best of luck, see you soon!”  
“See you soon” I said, running to catch the bus.

In an extraordinary feat of optimism, I woke up approximately two hours earlier than usual. I got on the bus so early that it was populated solely by myself and the driver for the duration of the journey. I thought to myself that I should just enjoy the music for now, since everything else was out of the question. Wanting more, whilst being myself, was obscene. It was early on the Sirius of the sixteenth, so early that the sun was just rising. I hadn’t planned on hearing Sirius play the piano just yet but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the familiar keys playing an unfamiliar piece. Something seemed off though, the way the music refused to flow, each note was clipped off religiously and seemed entirely isolated to the proceeding and following one. The result of this was an unsettlingly robotic performance, one that I suspected, and more importantly, wished wasn’t Sirius’. But Sirius was leaning on the bookshop wall, looking directly at me and smiling. He waved at me, and going against all the screaming voices in my head, I waved back to him, and went over.  
“You aren’t in your natural habitat?” I said, trying to be funny.  
Sirius laughed, though probably out of politeness “I was outcompeted by that jerk over there. He stares at me every morning and I’ve managed to beat him to it for a fortnight but sadly not today. I thought I’d let you provide this morning’s entertainment.” This was too much for me to handle. I had to think fast. I looked inside the bookstore and saw the staff perfecting their shelves. It was a few minutes past seven so I was sure we could go inside.  
“I know what we can do” I said, taking off my backpack and tearing two sheets of note paper from my planer. I gave them both to Sirius and went back into my backpack to get my pencil case and opened it up. “Green, light green, pink, orange, light blue, navy blue, red or black?” I asked.  
“Umm… Navy Blue” he replied and I handed him over a navy blue pen, taking the light blue one for myself. I gave him my chemistry textbook and took my biology one out to lean on.  
“Okay, write these down in a list, leaving enough space between them. Book I’d recommend, Book to never ever read, Book with a character that shares my name, Short Story, Book with a green cover, Book i’ve never read before, but hey the cover looks cool and finally Free space for any book you want. Once we’ve written them down, we can swap them and keep these so that we’re never out of books to read.”  
“Sounds Interesting.” Sirius had scrawled out the titles in shockingly messy handwriting and I made a mental note to never lose the navy pen. “Should we split up to cover the whole shop?”  
“That sounds good, and then we can meet in the reading corner on the top floor”  
“Okay then. Hmm, I think we should make this into a competition. First to the reading corner gets to make the loser do anything they want.” I must have looked horrified because Sirius stuttered and clarified “Within reason of course”  
Trying to sound composed despite the fact that I was blushing at an abnormal level I replied with “Ah okay then, perfect!”  
He followed me inside and up the escalator, making shockingly bearable small talk about what we had planned for the day until we split up and filled out the sheets of paper. I filled mine in thoughtfully, but hung mostly around the classics section, peeking into bookshelves and scribbling titles down, then crossing them out again repeatedly. Sirius meandered discerningly around the shop, and when he settled on the perfect book, he wrote it down carefully, and then moved on to the next item on the list; confident in his decision. This put me at great unease, if he was like that with books then one could only imagine what he was like with people. He seemed to only accept the best, he even chose the most aesthetically pleasing editions to copy the name and author from. With my scarred skin, too-big nose, and my comparative idiocy when compared to Sirius, my literary counterpart would be a well worn annotated copy of some penny dreadful tripe. I was so distracted by this that when I arrived, list in hand, to the reading corner, Sirius said he’d been waiting half an hour.  
“What? I’m so sorry I made you wait that long!”  
Sirius started to laugh “I was here for about five minutes tops, don’t worry!”  
“Oh, I sort of zoned out, and I wasn’t really sure how much time had passed. So there was a very big chance it could have been thirty minutes, or an hour, or maybe just five minutes.”  
“I think I would have tried to hurry you along if it was an hour! I don’t want you being late for school again!”  
“I wasn’t that late! And besides nobody really noticed me coming in because they were all worried about it being Friday the thirteenth”  
Sirius laughed again “You know I didn’t even realise it was Friday the thirteenth. I had a pretty amazing day, no bad luck at all. Except for when you had to leave early. I was going to ask you your name. Mine’s Sirius by the way.”  
“Oh, mine’s-”  
And then I hesitated for a few seconds, deciding that this was a sort of crossroad moment. If I told him my name, I could open myself up to him fully. The name could act as a blank canvas, one that he could paint the things he discovered about me onto. Then one day, he could look at the picture, and see that it was hideous. Or one day he could look at it and fall in love. I didn’t know which one was worse.  
“Remus.” he said. “I saw it written on the side of your green folder. The one that i’m going to take a wild guess and say was for your Biology notes”  
It seemed as I had no say in the matter.  
“I’d saw your name on your coffee cup the other day” I admitted.  
“So we’re both slightly creepy” he joked.  
“I guess we are. But we weren't weird enough to use them without being properly introduced. And that’s the most important thing.”  
“You seem to have the etiquette for stalking all sorted out then.”  
“Of course!” I held out the list of books for him. “Here you go.”  
He gave his to me. 

Sirius was back on the piano on the seventeenth, but he had agreed to hand it over at seven to his rival so I only got to hear fifteen minutes of Mozart until five past when he gave in to the venomous stares of the other man. We walked for exactly one mile, up an inclined road, I had told him about a place where he could get the best coffee and bagels in the city and he had insisted I show him where it is.  
“He really pisses me off you know”  
“Who, the robot guy?”  
Sirius laughed “He’s called Peter. He’s in my tutorial group”  
“Have you ever seen him eat anything?”  
“No?”  
“Have you ever seen him drink anything?”  
“Not really?”  
“Have you ever seen him sleep,laugh, smile or anything along those lines?”  
“Peter is definitely a robot- think about it Pedantic-Evil -Tutorial- Enemy- Robot. P.E.T.E.R. Or Peter for when he’s trying to blend in as a human”  
“Maybe the purple haired barista programmed him to try and overthrow me”  
“Well I saw a fair few people checking him out today, so I think that his dastardly plans will backfire.”  
“I hope he doesn’t steal away all my admirers”  
“Heaven forbid you’re less attractive than a robot” I joked, but I felt queasy at what Sirius had just said. It made me feel as though I was one in a long list of people. And that was never a good feeling if you consider that if that list were put in rank order, I would hands down finish in last place.  
“You okay?” Sirius asked looking slightly concerned.  
“Mm hmm” I said, knowing that I needed to just keep my mouth shut before I started crying.  
“You know I wouldn’t go for walks with any of them though. Or spend my night reading a book they recommended instead of hooking up with one of my flatmates.”  
I stared at him, with my mouth slightly open and my eyebrows furrowed. “You should have hooked up with your flatmate!”  
“No way! I was really getting into the book!”  
“Which one was it?”  
“Attachments. I sort of like the idea of a hot nerd watching me from afar and falling in love” He smiled at me, and I didn’t doubt for a second what he was referring to.  
“The ending was far-fetched though, don’t you think?”  
“Nope. I can see how it could easily happen.”  
I blushed and ducked my head. We had approached the cafe on the other side of the city centre, it was opposite the philharmonic hall, and when you looked down, it seemed as if all the buildings in the city were nestled in the f in the road.  
“Have you had breakfast?” Sirius asked  
“No”  
“Well let me buy you breakfast” This was another crossroad moment. “You can’t exactly say no either, I got to the reading corner first. Unless you really really don’t want me to?”  
I really really didn’t want him to. I could list so many reasons I didn’t want him to. The medication that I was on made eating a repulsive necessity. If he bought me food, it would seem too much like a date. If we started dating then I’d be obliged to tell him things. That knowledge would shatter his delusions of me being any definition of attractive. It would shatter my delusions that I could be found attractive. We had something good going on here and it would be ridiculous to want anything more. And besides-  
“Too late!” Sirius declared “You’re overthinking things” Did that mean I was reading too much into things? Did he just want to be friends and I’d foolishly assumed he thought I was worth anything more. “Remus. You need to stop thinking now.”  
“Sorry. I’d love to have breakfast with you!”  
“Perfect.”  
We walked inside and waited at the counter.  
“What will it be then? I don’t actually know what you’d go for coffee-wise”  
“Americano, no sugar, no milk. You got it wrong the first time, sorry”  
“It’s funny because you don’t come across as that type of person. You seem more like a pumpkin spice latte sort of person or something like that.”  
“Ew no, I don’t want to get judged by the barista.”  
“I bet you go for the extra twenty pence blend of coffee that they always try to sell you.”  
“Twenty pence is a small price to pay to avoid an awkward situation”  
“Why would it be awkward?”  
“I’ve got pretty bad anxiety” I admitted. “Everything is awkward, and terrifying, and another opportunity for people to judge me. The nervous feeling that usually gets reserved for exams or important phone calls, I sort of feel it all the time”  
“Even now?”  
“Especially now! I think anyone would feel nervous now!”  
“I’m not making you nervous, am I?”  
“You’re not doing anything to make me nervous. But you’re sort of, you know…”  
“I don’t know” Sirius was grinning at me.  
“Don’t make me say it!”  
“You’ve made me curious now though.”  
“You’re… a very cool customer.”  
I’d made Sirius laugh again. “Is that really the best that you can do?”  
“You’re a total ten out of ten.”  
“That’s better, you’ve finally restored my ego, after it was crushed by P.E.T.E.R.”  
“I think it would take more than a robot to do that.”  
Sirius was called up to the till, he turned around quickly and said “What do you want?”  
“Surprise me” I replied and then chose a seat that faced the window, and put my bag on the chair next to me.  
Sirius came over a few minutes later “They said they'd bring our stuff over.” and then we got back to the small talk. Occasionally we would veer into something more serious, but then one of us would make a stupid joke and we’d put off baring ourselves to each other for another time. The drinks came, then the food. He’d gotten me a cinnamon bagel with nutella and strawberries and had gotten himself the same thing.  
At ten past eight, I thanked him for a great time but said I had to be going to school. He said it would be his pleasure and walked me to the bus stop just outside the cafe. As the bus drove off, he waved at me, and I waved back, feeling a fleeting warmth that was soon replaced with a crushing guilt. I didn’t deserve any of this.

Exactly one mile left of that cafe was one of the ugliest hospitals in the known universe. It was a sandstone monstrosity, it’s facade decorated with hundreds of grimy windows. Once you got past the exterior, the inside was antithetical, bright and clinical yet retaining a little warmth, something which it’s friendly staff were in no short supply of. You could do a few breathing exercises to steady yourself. You would take a right, and double back on yourself, going up an escalator and left, staying left, and going through three sets of double doors, passing the courtyard and the offices. Then you would go through whatever door matched your gender, except for on a Wednesday when everyone went to the female section. You would give in your name, date of birth, and ask to see a nurse, anyone will do because they are all as good as each other. Then you would wait in the lounge, avoid eye contact, take out a textbook and use it to cover your face as you cried, look around frantically trying to ensure you do not know anybody there, try and fail to do some more breathing exercises and wish that your boyfriend would just come with you, just once. Then when your nurse called your name, you would panic just a little bit more, perhaps cry again in their room, but then you would settle down and have the treatment. The nurse would tell you that it isn’t your fault. It’s very common. Do you want another leaflet? You might want to talk to a therapist about this? You would make the same journey back, a little bit slower of course and get the bus home, distraught, unable to run for the night, but slightly better.  
I repeated this process for two months, until all visible symptoms were eradicated.I dumped Benjy too, in a moment of clarity. Now I was, like eighty percent of the population, just a carrier of the virus. But I felt alone. I felt even more so on the eighteenth of November, when Sirius wasn’t on the piano.

And the nineteenth.

And the twentieth.

On the twenty-third I wasn’t counting on seeing him. I wasn’t really counting on anything. I’d been lucky enough to even know his name. But he was there, playing a song I didn’t know, one I know now to be a backing track from a ridiculously emotional anime. He had a bright pink knitted bobble hat on and it looked such a humorous contrast to his usual punky style and his nose was red. He had two flasks with him. One was an industrial sized thermos, with a handle that was more suited to a briefcase than a flask. The other was small and white with a panda on it. Sirius called me over and passed me the smaller flask, taking a small sip out of the enormous one.  
“Overcompensating for something?” I asked  
Sirius choked slightly on the hot liquid. “As if. I’m under strict orders to drink about three litres of this stuff a day. It’s mint tea, Dorcas made it. She’s from Morocco and they’re well known for their tea there.”  
“I know. I went there last summer.” I took a sip out of my flask. “It’s wonderful. Are you feeling okay by the way?”  
“Nah. I’ve been sick the past few days. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the piano.”  
“It’s okay. The tea more than makes up for it.”  
“That was Dorcas again. My roommate gave me the pink hat though. I think he still sort of hates me.”  
“Because you rejected him for a book?”  
“I don’t fancy him either way, book or no book.”  
“That’s fair enough then.”  
I sat on the piano, as he played a medley of rock songs, singing along to the ones that I knew and simply appreciating the ones I didn’t.  
“You’ve got a beautiful voice.”  
“Ha ha very funny. I don’t think anybody sounds nice at half seven in the morning so cut me some slack and don’t take the piss.”  
“I’m not taking the piss” Sirius said, laughing slightly.”I like it. You’re sort of gravelly for the first few songs and then when you loosen up you sound even better. I have no clue how you managed to sing Requiem though.”  
“I had choir the day before.”  
“That will explain it. But i’ve got to say that I really do like your morning voice.”  
I could tell that I was blushing even before he pointed it out. Sometimes I let myself imagine what life with him would be like, would he be the type of boyfriend who sent me silly messages to wake up to, or would he stay up to ridiculous hours in the morning sending me goofy selfies? I imagined him being an excellent kisser, but an even better person to cuddle. I wondered what people would think of us as a couple if they saw us walking down the road. Perhaps people already thought we were a couple.  
“I’d love to know what goes on in your head, Remus”  
No you wouldn’t, Sirius.

On tuesday the twenty fourth, it rained for the first time that month. Sirius and I were sat in the bus shelter together I handed him an envelope. It was blue and had a drawing of a cat on, inside was a ticket and a little map I had printed, with information about the best busses to get.  
“You don’t have to go by any means. The tickets were free and you can take however many you need so that will be fine. It’s sort of boring the part that I’m in, there’s loads of hymns and hardly any solos but after that there’s a concert in the hall, which is just next door and that’s really fun. Loads of my friends are in the orchestra and a few bands too so I’m going there anyway to watch them. They’ve got mince pies too, but not like the meat-based ones. Obviously. And since I’m in the choir I get to go backstage and take loads of cookies! But if you don’t want to come at all it’s okay, because it’s on a thursday in the party season and you probably don’t want to watch a bunch of kids make music when you could be having a party. But the option is there if you didn’t have anything else-”  
“Remus!”  
“Yeah?”  
“I’d love to come see you perform”  
“Really?” I gasped.  
“Of course. It would be an honor?”  
“Is that sarcasm?”  
“No it isn’t you plant pot. I want to watch you sing. Plus it will probably be your last year doing it which will make it even more special to you. I wouldn’t miss it for the world”  
“Thank you so much!”  
Siirius put his envelope into his satchel and ruffled my hair.  
“I think if I was anyone else, you wouldn’t have that hand left you know?”  
“And why is that?”  
“People put a lot of effort into their hair. I’m not expecting you to understand that, but…”  
He ruffled my hair up even more, to the point where it was sticking out at all angles and I lunged forward and messed his up, his hair was tangled and was slightly wet from the rain, making it fully malleable in my hand. He stared at me in shock and I thought I’d finally ruined things between us completely when his hands threaded through my hair one last time, and he crashed our lips together. It was surprisingly violent for a first kiss, everything was too fast, and whatever message he was trying to convey through it came out distorted. I broke the kiss apart too quickly, and the fear in my mind was mirrored in his face. I didn’t say a word as I picked up my bag and ran onto the bus that had arrived a few stops down, not looking back once. It was unfortunately the seventy-two, but I had enough time to get off and get the next one once I was a safe distance down the road. 

On the twenty fifth, I had planned to take the same detour that I had taken a few weeks ago. But I felt that would be irresponsible, I had kissed him back, I had wanted that kiss with every fibre of my being and I was sure he could tell that. Sirius was scared too for whatever reason, and I just couldn’t ignore that, even if all he had to say to me was sorry, he at least deserved me sticking around to hear it. I walked past his piano and he was playing Winter Winds for the second time, just as beautiful as the first, but maybe even more so because I knew the person behind it. Maybe that was why it sounded so much more sad too. Sirius saw me and looked down immediately, his playing slowed down, it became more erratic and the notes seemed to be in entirely the wrong place, until he stopped altogether, three bars from the end, his hands resting on the keys. I couldn’t tell what I should do, P.E.T.E.R was watching him play, and I thought he would look more victorious but instead he just looked concerned. I had to talk to him. I approached the piano.  
“Sirius.” I said. “Come on, I think we should talk about this.”  
“What is there to talk about.” he replied bitterly, and it honestly did hurt a lot. I think it must have showed because he looked up at me and shut the piano, taking me by the arm and walking me into the bookstore. We went upstairs in silence, up to the reading corner with the huge beanbags.  
“Listen, I should-” I started.  
“No, let me apologize first.” Sirius said. “I jumped to conclusions and didn’t think about what you wanted, I took things way too fast and I’m honestly sorry for that. It’s just I haven’t felt this way for years, and I was sure you felt it too. I am so sorry for not asking you before though. Really I am.”  
“I do feel the same.”  
“You do?” Sirius looked up at me and smiled, touching my arm lightly. I moved my arm away from his quickly and frowned.  
“I really really do. I have ever since I heard you on the piano. But you wouldn’t want to even talk to me if I told you the truth!”  
“Try me! Do I look judgemental to you.”  
“I’m sorry but I can’t.”  
“Why not?”  
“I just can’t!” I shouted at him, and I realised that tears were streaming down my face. “You’re out of my league anyway.”  
“That’s an awful thing to say.”  
“Okay then. I’m sorry. But even if I was anywhere near as good as you, you still wouldn’t want to touch me with a bargepole.”  
“I don’t know if I would or not if you won’t tell me what’s wrong!”  
And that’s what I told him what was wrong with me, or more precisely, screamed it at him. I told him all of the medical facts that I had memorized, I gave him a five minute speech about how it happened, I told him it was why I was so anxious and depressed, I told him that if he never wanted to speak to me again then that was fine too. I laid everything out for him, so he could have all the information he needed, and didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions. I left the shop crying, getting disgusted glances from all the staff who had heard me. 

The next morning was heavenly, since I had no reason to get out of bed early I got the latest bus possible and slept in for an extra hour and a half. Sirius’ piano was surrounded by girls singing christmas songs, and I couldn’t tell who was playing it. I wondered what he’d done with the concert tickets. I imagined him putting them into one of those yellow biohazard boxes, sealing it up and incinerating it. 

That Friday, I left school early with Lily.  
“The 52 is running again on the first!”  
“What? Really?”  
“Yeah! There was a sign on the 50 this morning. I’ve never been more relieved in all my life! So what bus do you get home now?”  
“I take any bus into town, then any that goes to my house.”  
“Are they frequent?”  
“Really frequent. Much better than the 52.”  
“Are they really much better or do they just give you a daily view of the piano guy.”  
“Both.”  
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. I had told so many people about Sirius and everybody was rooting for me, even the people who knew that they were against all odds. But the way I saw it, this was such a transient thing. At the end of the month, I could just go back to my regular life, getting the 52 straight to school and not quickly falling in love with anyone I saw on the way. Some people would still ask after him, but less and less would as time went on. We would all go our separate ways at the end of the year and in years to come someone would ask after him I would throw my head back and laugh, saying “To think you would believe that silly fing had any gravitas!”, finish my champagne and go to collect my Nobel Prize.  
I had avoided Sirius that morning. 

In accordance with the laws of entropy, the universe decided that my life was utterly devoid of disorder and so from the minute my alarm clock failed to ring, I was thrown into chaos. My hair was beyond any help, I had stacks of books in my arms from my weekend’s revision and to top things off completely, there was no time for a shortcut so I ran straight past the piano and straight into someone coming out of the bookshop. It was obviously Benjy, and obviously my glasses fell to the floor, leaving me scrambling on the floor and Benjy swooping down to collect my books and save the day.  
“Fancy seeing you here” Benjy said.  
I could feel some distant part of me melting and yielding to him. Because he was my first and as far as I was concerned, he would be my last. I suppose we will always have that connection. He was the one who told me that nobody would ever want to be with me, (unless they had a fetish for elevated risk, and even they probably won’t love you, you can’t expect that). He was the one who never came to the hospital with me. He was the one who wouldn’t leave the house with me because my anxiety would get so bad that I’d cry over a stuttered word.  
“The 52 is broken” I said. It didn’t really make much sense and I had avoided eye contact but a message was conveyed so there’s one victory. “You’re meant to be in school too.”  
“51 is the same” Obviously. “So.” Benjy looked at me, head tilted like a predator trying to see how few steps it takes to ensnare the prey. Or maybe just trying to see how he could talk to me without saying the wrong thing. “How’s the man hunt going?”.  
And then I just lost it. I screamed at him; real undignified, sweary, shouty screaming about therapy and prozac and how he’d ruined things for me and nobody would ever love me at all and how I could never hunt for a man and why did he think that was right to say? I had worn myself out and worked myself up, to the point where I was out of breath and Benjy was just stood there taking it. I was so angry and frustrated that I felt seconds away from punching him when I felt that dreadful crying feeling across the bridge of my nose and felt my eyes well up. I realised at that point that the canary in the mine had stopped singing. The piano has stopped playing.  
Sirius had affected a cocky walk and sauntered over to where we were standing. “Remus. Are you having a problem here?”  
Benjy sneered and said “Who’s this then?”  
“I’m his boyfriend.” Sirius and I said simultaneously. Sirius looked quite shocked that I’d stolen his line and grinned at me. I scowled back at him.  
“Well I’ll leave you to it then.”  
“Okay then” I said, not bothering to make eye contact.  
I watched Benjy walk towards the bus stops and I felt a sense of closure, like I could say “that’s the last time I ever saw him” if I had any foresight. Sirius was standing around, watching me, probably hoping that declaring himself to be my boyfriend wasn’t some sort of binding agreement.  
“Thanks for that” I said to him, ready to walk away and see him for the last time. After today the pianos would be gone.  
“No, Remus wait” Sirius pleaded, stretching his arms out and pulling me in. His arms wrapped around me and I stood very still with my head on his shoulder, unsure if I should be closing my eyes. He released me after some time. “You left too early the other day” he said, using his perfect thumb to wipe the tears from my eyes.  
“Would you have stayed if you were me? It seemed pretty clear that you didn’t even want to look at me, let alone bother forming the words to reject me. I bet you felt so disgusted that you felt attracted to me.”  
“I was just trying to find the right thing to say, I wasn’t disgusted or anything, I couldn’t care less about anything you told me!”  
“Of course. You didn’t even like me anyway. I get it, you’re handsome and can get anyone you want. You got bored and decided that you’d like a challenge and go for the ugly, sickly nerd. Well it worked didn’t it!? Until I threw a spanner in the works and started to like you! I bet you’ve been judging me all this time!”  
“I would never judge you or anything like that, I like you too much! It breaks my heart to think that you have been through something so awful as that, I can't begin to imagine what it would be like. I'm so sorry if I've fucked things up. I don’t see you as a challenge or some sort of prize in an arrogant game. I really like you and I just want you to know that that will never change.”  
“And what I told you doesn’t matter? We can’t even have sex!”  
“'I'm glad you've been able to tell me. I don't even know how you could deal with something like that. You're obviously so much stronger and braver than I could have imagined. I'm just so sorry to have made you feel like that, I like you so much I just can't bear the thought that you've been through something so shitty as that and I'm here being all soppy and trying to rush into a relationship.”  
I looked up at Sirius and saw, for the first time, someone imperfect, someone beyond the steely grey eyes and those cheekbones and the adorable cockiness. I saw someone who wanted something so much, someone who was scared to say the wrong thing because he could mess something up. And Sirius was no different from me in that sense.  
“You’re perfect, Remus and I’ll wait for anything. I’ll wait until you’re ready for a relationship, and I’ll wait until you’re ready for sex, even if you never are. But I want to do everything with you and I won’t let something so insignificant ruin my chances of happiness with you.”  
I could feel my argumental power diminishing. “But you don’t even know me”  
“I do. I know you’re different from anyone I’ve ever met, in the best way possible. You’re a nerd and you’re bitterly sarcastic, you can never hide your emotions and you’re always wrapped up warm, regardless of the fact that it’s like still 19 degrees here for some reason. And quite frankly, you’re fit, Remus. I was kicked out of my lecture the other day because I was thinking about your nose.”  
“No way! You actually like my nose!”  
“It’s bloody gorgeous.”  
“You were kicked out of a lecture!”  
“Yeah but it’s your nose, it’s more important.”  
And then my resolve snapped, I was in fits of laughter and Sirius was smiling at me the entire time, looking perfect, and for the first time I didn’t think of what everyone would think of us together, but I thought of how good it would be with him as a permanent fixture in my life. And maybe I deserved it.  
“Go on then.” I said. “It’s going to be a nightmare because my self esteem is negligible and It’s going to be so much hard work.” Sirius was still smiling at me. “But you don’t care about that at all.  
“Not at all.” Sirius replied, taking my hand. “It’s 9:30 by the way, you’re missing school.”  
“I’m missing fuck all.” Then it hit me that I had an essay to do and two practical lessons and there was a cake sale at lunch and I didn’t want to miss the notices in the regis-  
“Go.” Sirius said “I’ll be here when you get back.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing fanfiction or any other type of fiction.  
> I wrote this as part of my recovery from a relationship that ended awfully. I faced the same issues that Remus faced in the fic and it has a lot of personal significance to me and writing it helped me get through some really shitty times, as did reading wolfstar stuff in general. Some events have been taken from my life, some dialogue has been taken from conversations with people. I started writing this soon after the break up and ended it pretty cynically and didn't publish it. Almost 8 months later, and 2.5 months into my new relationship with the sweetest person I have ever met and I decided to re-write the last few days and give Remus the happy ending that I have.
> 
> Comments are really welcome and so are criticisms (but please be nice to me!)


End file.
